


i can't call you a stranger (but i can't call you)

by 20thcenturyhobi (wanderlustnostalgia)



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Cameos, F/F, F/M, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Psychology, apologies to all psych majors, i take everything i learned in AP psych and proceed to butcher it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 19:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20214958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustnostalgia/pseuds/20thcenturyhobi
Summary: “Do you ever miss it?”“Miss what?”“You know.”--Seungwan and Namjoon renavigate their relationship.





	i can't call you a stranger (but i can't call you)

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what possessed me to write this and I have no idea if I'll ever finish it, but I'm posting it anyway.
> 
> Title from "Tell Me How" by Paramore.

“Do you ever miss it?”

Namjoon looks up at her, lollipop sticking out of his mouth. It’s staining his lips blue. There’s something achingly familiar about the way he’s looking at her. “Miss what?”

“You know.” Seungwan nods at him, gestures between his lap and hers, the lollipop in his mouth. He stares blankly, with all the wide-eyed puzzlement of a little boy. For someone so smart, Seungwan thinks (not for the first time), he can be so clueless.

It’s cooled down a bit in the quad; the drink in her hand has been melting, the _crunch_ in her dew-soaked hands softening gradually to a _squelch._ She’s not sure how long she’s been standing here, how long he’s been sitting here. How long the crowds of students and stoners have been filtering in and out of the quad, the dew evaporating on the grass, the trees’ shadows distorting in orbit.

She sighs and plants herself next to Namjoon anyway, rough concrete scraping her exposed thighs. Both her knees and his are bare. She’s conscious of the length of her skirt, the rips in his jeans, the precarious inches of space that separate them.

Years ago, before college and awkwardness and tiptoeing around each other at mutual friends’ parties, Seungwan read over his shoulder as he explained the contents of his psychology textbook. _Procedural memory,_ he’d said, pointing to a bolded phrase in the text; _when you do something so much that after a while you don’t have to think about it, it becomes automatic. Like a reflex._

It’s the only explanation Seungwan can come up with for why her fingers twitch, unbidden, when she sets her palm in the empty space between them. Her knee inches closer, closer, and she finds herself having to pull her head up when it tilts, unconsciously, toward his shoulder. Never has she been more acutely aware of distance. Never has something felt so much and not enough, all at once.

Namjoon clears his throat; she should have guessed he’d be the one to break the silence.

“Sometimes,” he says, the lollipop stick still caught between his teeth. Lips blue, sticky; one time she shoved him into a bale of hay when he refused to share one with her. “Sometimes,” he says, “I like to think about what could’ve been.”

He leans in, and his bare knee knocks against hers.

Seungwan sucks in a breath. She barely manages not to jerk her leg away from the contact.

“I should go,” she says. “It’s getting late.”

It’s half past two, but he has class and she has homework and the breeze is cold against the backs of her legs. She bites her lip, watches him watch her. He doesn’t offer to walk her back.

There was a point in time where they were a unit, Namjoon-and-Seungwan, Seungwan-and-Namjoon, the two of them against the world. They were each other’s everything.

In the end, that’s what ruined them.

“You can’t be each other’s everything,” Yoongi told Namjoon, over lunch. “That’s an impossible expectation to hold yourselves to. They’ll always want something more. Something you can’t give them.”

“I know you cared for each other,” Joohyun consoled, an arm wrapped around Seungwan as she wept. “But that’s the risk you take, anchoring yourself to someone when you’re not really sure what you want out of life yet.”

The songs Namjoon writes afterward are ambivalent, laced through with heartbreak and happiness, nostalgia and brutality, regret and relief. _I am sorry,_ he scribbles, _for asking so much of you. _Ink stains his fingers, smudges when the tears hit the page (he’s ruined more lecture notes than he cares to admit). _I am sorry,_ he thinks, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes,_ for giving so much away._

Seungwan, meanwhile, types and deletes more texts than she can count, stares at the space next to his contact name where the heart used to be.

_I miss u, _she writes, over and over. _I’m sorry I couldn’t be enough._

_I’m sorry that I gave you so little of my love._

_I’m sorry that I gave it to someone else._

Seungwan rolls over in bed, throws an arm over her eyes. As she puts her phone on the nightstand, it buzzes.

**Hyun**

_Night wannie <3 sweet dreams, call me in the morning if you need to talk_

Seungwan swallows. _<3, _she texts back, and stares at the message until her vision blurs.

“I don’t understand boys,” Seulgi complains.

Seungwan is slouched in their computer chair watching Seulgi pace, the slim e.e. cummings volume in her lap long forgotten. Unruly strands of Seulgi’s hair fly out from her ponytail. Seungwan swivels the chair back and forth, back and forth, to the rhythm of Seulgi’s feet.

“His _knee,_” Seulgi moans, stomping across the room with her finger pointed accusatorily, “his _stupid_ knee! Why can’t boys protect their knees? Why do they _insist_ on wearing jeans with holes in them?”

Seungwan stops swiveling. Her fingertips grip the edges of the armrests, the book caught between her knees. God, her _knees._

Seulgi is really onto something. She often is, somehow unfailingly oblivious to her own genius. And now she’s looking at Seungwan expectantly, eyebrow quirked like she knows Seungwan’s spent the last two days thinking about knees, like she’s got the key that unlocks the whole puzzle.

“…Boys are stupid?” Seungwan offers hesitantly.

“Boys are stupid!” Seulgi confirms, throwing her arms up. “Stupid boys. Stupid Hoseok. Why would you run down a flight of stairs in a pair of ripped jeans anyway?”

Right, that’s what this conversation was about. Jung Hoseok. Jung Hoseok and his ripped, knee-less jeans, tripping down a flight of stairs and tearing up his skin.

“He took one look at the blood and almost passed out,” Seulgi tells Seungwan, shaking her head. “This is our captain, Wannie. This is who we’ve trusted with our future.”

(Jung Hoseok, who showed up to Seungwan’s anthropology lecture with a grimace and a giant Hello Kitty band-aid on his kneecap, sat behind her explaining the situation in hushed tones to whoever was sitting next to him. “I blame you, Kim Namjoon,” he complained, and Seungwan froze. “You’ve infected me with your clumsiness.”

The low, helpless chuckle that followed made Seungwan shiver. “They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, Hoseok-ah.”)

“He’s a good dancer,” Seungwan offers, a feeble attempt to contribute to the conversation.

Seulgi sighs. “He’s a great dancer. The best of the best,” she says, collapsing onto Seungwan’s bed. “That’s the problem. All the good people are crazy.”

_Are they?_ Seungwan thinks. “Joohyun isn’t crazy,” she says, before she can stop herself.

“Joohyun is plenty crazy,” Seulgi scoffs. “She doesn’t eat chicken. Who doesn’t eat chicken?”

“She got sick once after eating it,” Seungwan says. “She associates it with sickness, even if it didn’t make her sick. It’s evolution. You do whatever it takes to spare yourself the pain, however irrational.”

“You and your psychology.” Seulgi grins, rolling over and poking Seungwan’s cheek. “Forget literature. You’re in the wrong major, Wannie.”

Seungwan bites her lip. “I really don’t know that much,” she says quietly, thinking back to late nights and textbooks and fingers turning pages, chins on shoulders, knees brushing knees.

In high school, Namjoon started an English language club. Seungwan was the only member, and occasionally Kibum if he could be dragged away from Minho for five minutes.

The English language club lasted for all of two months and Seungwan was at every meeting, watching videos with Namjoon and occasionally correcting his pronunciation, his grammar, his word choices. She’d always spoken both languages at home, felt more comfortable with Korean, but slipping back into her second language filled her with an unexpected warmth, a pang of longing for the country she’d grown up in, the friends who bought her lattes and walked her home in the snow, laughing as they slipped and fell on the ice in a messy tangle of limbs.

Now, Seungwan’s in college, and she’s staring down a flyer for a mixer on Saturday: “for students to improve their English with native and fluent speakers—all are welcome!”

“Ooh, a party?” Sooyoung says, snatching the flyer. She scans it over, then tosses it aside. “Ew, learning. No, thanks.”

“Sounds fun,” hums Seulgi. “I’m busy tonight, though. You should take Joohyun.”

Seungwan looks at Joohyun, who’s frowning intently at her laptop screen through her reading glasses. Looks back at the flyer, at the phone number she spent years memorizing, the digits still inked into the back of her brain.

“Unnie!” Seulgi says brightly. “There’s a mixer on Saturday, you should go.”

Joohyun looks up. “A mixer?” she asks, eyebrow raised. “Aren’t those for undergrads? I’m not an undergrad.”

“Don’t be _snobby._” Seulgi dangles the flyer in front of Joohyun’s nose. “You don’t have to be an undergrad to make new friends.”

A compelling argument, to be sure. Sometimes Seungwan wonders if Seulgi would have joined the debate team in another life.

Joohyun squints at the text. “Improving your English? I don’t think I need a mixer to do that. You should show this to Yerim, she might enjoy it.”

“Putting Yerim at the mercy of drunk college boys?” Sooyoung snorts. “I thought you were the responsible one, unnie.”

“I agree. We wouldn’t want to give Seungwannie a headache,” Seulgi says, leaving Joohyun with the flyer and resting her chin on Seungwan’s head. “Besides, Yerimie has homework.”

_I’ll have a headache no matter who I go with,_ Seungwan thinks, watching Joohyun read the flyer over. A tiny crease forms between Joohyun’s brows.

“On second thought,” Joohyun says, eyes fixed on the paper, “I suppose it might be fun. Is Yongsun going?”

“I’ll ask Byulyi,” Seulgi says, clapping her hands. “I knew you’d come around, unnie.”

“Something like that,” Joohyun murmurs. She catches Seungwan’s eye. Heat crawls up Seungwan’s cheeks.

This is going to be the worst headache of her life.


End file.
